Android phones are some of the most connected devices around, but it is still a hassle to beam your personal media to other home gadgets like a TV, Xbox, or PS3.

PacketVideo, the company that contributed multimedia capabilities to Android as an original member of the Open Handset Alliance, gave us a quick demo of their new TwonkyServer Mobile service. The app is now available in the Andriod Market and turns any Android device into a mobile media sever.

Once installed, the app is capable of connecting your Android handset to thousands of UPnP and DLNA certified devices including networked TVs, connected A/V receivers, digital photo frames and even popular gaming consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360.

“For most consumers, the mobile device is the one product that is always turned on, always by their side and is increasingly the most utilized device fro storing personal media. TwonkyServer Mobile enables users to bridge the mobile and home environments and share their media in completely innovative and almost magical ways.”James BraileanCEO PacketVideo

In our test of TwonkyServer, I was able to install the app and connect it to a Samsung DLNA TV in under a minute. We were amazed at the ease of use and how quickly it connected. There is virtually no setup required for TwonkyServer. Just launch the app and it will scan your phone for any media including pics, music, and video.

Pictures and music were beamed with ease, but we did encounter some issues when playing video. Our Nexus One records video in the 3gp format and the Samsung TV did not support the audio codec. We also found the PS3 was unable to play the video as well. Hopefully future firmware updates will allow these devices to fully support the popular 3gp format.

Grab the app from the Market and share your experiences with us. For more information on TwonkyMedia products from PacketVideo (including TwonkyMedia manager and TwonkyBeam) please visit twonkymedia.com

Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He resides in Dallas and carries the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One as his daily devices. Ask him a question on Twitter or Google+ and he is likely to respond. | Ethics statement

Most Tweeted This Week

I installed this, but so far it doesn’t do much. It scans and says how many music tracks, photos and videos I have. Then I can’t get it to do anything else. The only buttons that respond are the power button and rescan button, which get me nowhere.

The only other twonkymedia device I have is my Windows Home Server machine, so maybe there’s nothing to stream my phone’s content to, but I was hoping I could stream the other way and play all my videos and music on my droid.

I have high hopes for android and WHS playing nicely. Soon.

http://Website PS3 works

Installed app on phone. Worked (mostly) on PS3 with minimal effort. Was only able to list 100 songs on “Show All Tracks” listing, but could access all tracks via Artist List. Needs some sort of “refresh” function to reconnect….. also, what video formats are streamable to a PS3? Good proof of concept to show off stuff, but needs better user controls/documenation to be something worth using on a regular basis.

http://Website Diogo

cool when it works

http://www.everything.com Ramon

Worked perfectly on my laptop too!! I used Windows media player but twony tends to disconnect more often. Otherwise its great, now I can show off my g1 even more. Fews things to note, its a bit slow on the G1 and it disconnects a lot. I all I did was turn my wifi on my G1 and my laptop which both connects to my router. Then just open Windows Media Player and that’s it!

JB

Installed the twonkyserver manager on my pc in about a minute and connected instantly showing all 3000 songs and 200 photos. Love it!!

http://Website Jay

Works well when you’re using it, but when you’re done, it brings your phone to an absolute crawl, to the point where even taskiller can’t help you. Killing all your processes do nothing, so you still have switch your phone off and back on again. On the Hero anyway…

Also I don’t like the fact that if the phone’s screen goes off, as soon as it comes back on, it starts scanning for media again, which is horrid.

XenosNS

I’m using the app on my Hero with my PS3 , works beautifully. Wish the PS3 could read 3gp though.

Streaming media from your phone to your TV… eeeh, ok I guess that could be useful once in a while.
Streaming media from your PS3 to your phone, now that’s something! Seems to me that creating a dlna/upnp server for android is doing it back asswards. When will there be a client??
I want the same functionality I’ve got with my PSP… beeing able to connect to my PS3 from anywhere and as the PS3 is connected to my NAS I can stream movies and music to it. That’s what I want on my Hero… (or connect directly to the NAS)
All thats available today is a server and a few remotes. Aaaarg, someone make a client!

http://www.tekkendesign.com Tony

If Twonky got 1st place then who were the other nominees?

http://Website Mike

Installed on my Android phone and on my Samsung TV it shows all my Video files on the phone.

Problem is how on earth can you control a movie file?
Basically, it plays ther movie no problem but you can’t jump to a part of the movie, fast forward, rewind etc.
How do you you control the movie… the TV remote does not do anything except play and stop.

Tested on my SE x10 mini (android 2.1) with Sony Bravia Internet TV and FREEBOX HD (french internet DLNA media center) : it works great for pics and music. For videos, I have the same problem as you guys : can’t play 3gp recorded on my phone. I wish I could just change the recording video format to something else. Oh well…

I like twonky. Its great for media that is on my android phone that I want to stream to my ps3 and watch in full screen. My problem is that when I try to stream content from the internet to my ps3 from my android phone, it never works even though it gives me the option. I have several tv show and movie apps that offer the use of twonky so that I can watch full screen but there seems to be a compatibility issue with twonky and streaming content not yet downloaded on your phone to the ps3. Thanks for any help you can give.